Sixteen and a superhero, what a time to be alive! And racing for the fastest man alive title….
What They Say:
Kid Flash is taken off a mission and put on a delivery job with deadly surprises.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
When you’re sixteen, or just turned sixteen, things can definitely go in ways you don’t expect. Case in point is young Wally West, aka Kid Flash, as he celebrates his sixteenth birthday and everything seems to start off right. With a snow day in the area, all the food he loves, the team promising a birthday party surprise and the hopes of a kiss from Miss Martian has him walking on air. He’s gotten a good group of friends since being a part of the group but he’s still always looking for more things. It’s cute how much of a simple horn dog he is when it comes to the way he wants a kiss for the Miss, but it’s juts as much fun to see his reaction when Artemis tells him that Miss Martian and Superboy are an item. He’s just so oblivious that some things can get past the fastest kid alive.
Where things go even worse for him though is when the team gets called up to do a team up with the Justice League proper to deal with a new threat only to be told he’ll be the odd man out on it. Since he’s all about the glory and the fun of things at the moment, he’s not exactly keen on the fact he’s getting assigned to courier duty by delivering some critical organs across the country that’s finding itself caught up in a wave of snow that’s orchestrated by the villain du jour. Unfortunately for Wally, he ends up coming across his own problems along the way in the form of Vandal Savage. Savage has long been one of my favorite comics villains but one that figures into events in odd ways, including in this series. He provides an interesting diversion here, one that’s more psychologically based than anything else which messes with Kid Flash in a way that he really needs.
While the show does play to the larger storyline going on here with the two hero groups working together, there’s some good little twists with Kid Flash’s story as it goes on. While he’s not portrayed as the smartest character on the series, he’s not an idiot but rather someone that takes a little longer to put the pieces together. He’s getting caught up in something definitely bigger here and it works to show him that he has to do the right thing before doing the thing he wants to do. The things he has to deal with here is decently done though it does go for the obviously easy route at the end, which is unfortunate. It does show Kid Flash in a better light here when you get down to it, but the main villain behind events is dealt with in a very simplistic way.
In Summary:
Young Justice has a pretty fun episode here that focuses heavily on Kid Flash, a character that certainly could use a bit more growth. While he’s still going to play up the personality a lot, he gets humbled in a couple of ways here, from the truth about Miss Martian and Superboy to what he experiences while trying to save the girl with the heart condition and having some roadblocks hit him along the way. I’m a big fan of Wally from when he held the title as Flash in the comics but I also like him in this form as well since I grew up reading about him like this. His adventure here is pretty good but it’s also all part of some larger things going on which gets touched on towards the end here. While the episode could have been a bit better paced and a little more focused, it’s still good simple superhero fun without any really dorky material.
Grade: B